Pablo Picasso Quotes

When there's anything to steal, I steal

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. I'm not crazy about those cocks and asses and flying violinists and all the folklore, but his canvasses are really painted, not just thrown together. Some of the last thing's he's done in Vence [where Matisse painted his late frescos in the chapel] convince me that there's never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has. [Picasso is reacting to Chagall's daughter Ida, 1952]

The idea of research has often made painting go astray, and made the artist lose himself in mental lucubrations. Perhaps this has been the principal fault of modern art. The spirit of research has poisoned those who have not fully understood all the positive and conclusive elements in modern art and has made them attempt to paint the invisible and, therefore, the unpaintable.

Inspiration exists but it must find you working.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.

Todos los niños nacen artistas. El problema es cómo seguir siendo artista cuando creces.

Even the signature of Kodra is a work of art.

On August 2, 1914, I took Braque and Derain to the Gare d'Avignon [drafted as a soldier for World war 1.] I never saw them again [not literally a fact, but the close relation between Picasso and Braque ended].

Jedes Kind ist ein Künstler. Das Problem ist, ein Künstler zu bleiben, wenn du erwachsen bist.

How can you expect a beholder to experience my picture as I experienced it? A picture comes to me a long time beforehand; who knows how long a time beforehand, I sensed, saw, and painted it and yet the next day even I do not understand what I have done. How can anyone penetrate my dreams, my instincts, my desires, my thought, which have taken a long time to fashion themselves and come to the surface, above all to grasp what I put there, perhaps involuntary.

Translation: The glories, trumpets, palms... and low reliefs,... all that makes a monument.

We all know that art is not truth. Art is the lie that makes us realise the truth

Among the several sins that I have been accused of committing, none is more false than the one that I have, as the principal objective in my work, the spirit of research. When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for. In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by facts and not by reasons... [Paris 1923].